Payment Processors · reliability comparison

Square Payments vs Stripe: which is more reliable? (2026)

Stripe is more reliable than Square Payments, scoring 89.7 vs 53.3 out of 100. Over the last 90 days Square Payments reported 12 incidents and Stripe reported 28, with effective uptime of 98.93% and 99.99% respectively. Stripe resolves incidents faster on average (19m).

Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score

Square Payments

53.3/100

Operational

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Stripe

89.7/100

Operational

Visit Stripe ↗
VS
MetricSquare PaymentsStripe
Reliability score53.389.7
Rank (payment processors)#8#3
Uptime (90 days)98.93%99.99%
Incidents (90 days)1228
Partial / major outages01
Avg time to resolve12h 49m19m
Outages we detected00
Transparency score100/100100/100

Where Square Payments and Stripe differ

  • Stripe reported 2.3× as many incidents as Square Payments over the last 90 days (28 vs 12).
  • Stripe had 1 partial or major outage, compared with 0 for Square Payments.
  • Stripe fixes problems faster: 19m on average, against 12h 49m for Square Payments (41.1× quicker).
  • Square Payments's longest outage on record lasted 17h 43m (Apr 30, 2026); Stripe's lasted 2h 52m (May 16, 2026).

90-day uptime

Square Payments

Aug 4, 2026: 98.06% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Aug 5, 2026: 85.00% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Aug 6, 2026: 85.00% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Aug 7, 2026: 86.93% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Aug 8, 2026 – Aug 14, 2026: no incidentsAug 15, 2026: 99.20% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Aug 16, 2026 – Aug 17, 2026: no incidentsAug 18, 2026: 98.71% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Aug 19, 2026 – Aug 23, 2026: no incidentsAug 24, 2026: 99.82% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Aug 25, 2026 – Sep 9, 2026: no incidentsSep 10, 2026: 99.82% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Sep 11, 2026 – Sep 13, 2026: no incidentsSep 14, 2026: 99.36% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Sep 15, 2026: no incidentsSep 16, 2026: 99.64% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Sep 17, 2026: no incidentsSep 18, 2026: 88.11% uptime, 2 incidents (Degraded performance)Sep 19, 2026 – Sep 20, 2026: no incidentsSep 21, 2026: 97.29% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Sep 22, 2026: 85.00% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Sep 23, 2026: 85.00% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Sep 24, 2026: 99.61% uptime, 2 incidents (Degraded performance)Sep 25, 2026 – Sep 26, 2026: no incidentsSep 27, 2026: 97.23% uptime, 1 incident (Degraded performance)Sep 28, 2026 – Nov 1, 2026: no incidents
90 days ago98.931% average daily uptimeToday

Stripe

Aug 4, 2026 – Sep 26, 2026: no incidentsSep 27, 2026: 99.35% uptime, 1 incident (Partial outage)Sep 28, 2026 – Nov 1, 2026: no incidents
90 days ago99.992% average daily uptimeToday

Recent Square Payments incidents

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Recent Stripe incidents

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